'Cleopatra' by The Lumineers is the second song in their very famous storyline, "The Ballad of Cleopatra", which contains songs from their album "Cleopatra" and follows the story of a taxi driver named Cleopatra (duh!).
This song is narrated by Schultz from Cleopatra’s perspective who is now a 55-year-old woman and begins with Angela (from the fourth song, ‘Angela’) entering Cleopatra’s taxi. Cleopatra seems happy when she encounters the young woman because it reminds her of the times when she finally decided to leave her husband and begin living her life.
This is song is basically Cleopatra looking back at the life she has lived and the life she could have lived, thinking of What Ifs. Her lover had asked her to leave the town and run away with him (in the third song ‘Sleep on the Floor’) but she had to decide between staying and fulfilling her responsibilities as her father had just died, and running away to live the life she wanted for herself with her lover.
“When you knelt by my mattress, and asked for my hand But I was sad you asked it, as I laid in a black dress With my father in a casket”
The scene cuts to the young couple from ‘Sleep on the Floor’ in Cleopatra’s backseat and the lyrics say,
“And I left the footprints, the mud stained on the carpet And it hardened like my heart did when you left town”
The Lover, after being rejected, by Cleopatra left the town forever and this left her shattered. She wanted to marry him but couldn’t decide between stability and what she really wanted to do in life. She confesses that she would marry him in an instant but regrets that she had been late to pursue her dream life; her lover had already left town by the time she realized that she wanted to spend her life with him.
“But I was late for this, late for that, late for the love of my life”
She thinks that the only chance she’ll have to do the right thing on time or just be on time will be when she dies.
She picks up her son, whom she loves and cares for, from the airport decides to spend some time with him before she drops him off. The son looks around in her taxi and tries to fathom her life as a driver to which the narrator responds by singing,
“So, I drive a taxi, and the traffic distracts me From the strangers in my backseat, they remind me of you”
Being able to drive around and looking out the window of a moving car is something Cleopatra likes and this was only possible after she had left her previous life. She thinks that the only gift she ever received from God was “a birth and a divorce” from which we can conclude that she thinks of the divorce as sort of a re-birth for her as she gives it equal status to that of her birth.
The lyrics say,
“Now a nurse in white shoes leads me back to my guestroom It's a bed and a bathroom”
which hints at what the future holds for Cleopatra, a retirement home.
At the end of the video, Cleopatra drops her son off at her husband’s house and no matter how much she longs to go inside, make amends and have dinner with them like a normal family, she decides that it is not something she wanted and so she drives away.
Fun Fact: The Lumineers once mentioned in an interview, “Her (Cleopatra’s) boyfriend, after hearing no answer to his marriage proposal, left their small town rejected, never to return again. The day he had proposed it had been raining, and he had tracked in muddy footprints onto the carpet. She refused to wash these footprints off and always felt that he was the great love of her life.”
Amazing!!!
Great Work👍